Key Reflections
* There is a generational difference in ideological motivation between the terrorists that got involved pre-9/11 versus more of the millennial and Gen Z jihadists that came of age during and after the Arab Spring.
* Al-Qaeda are in Afghanistan, adopting a low profile and biding their time. Great power competition could serve as a distraction, enabling jihadist groups and affiliates to grow and expand globally.
* Al-Qaeda leader Ayman al-Zawahiri created a cut-out within al-Qaeda called al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which could be used to plot attacks regionally, away from Afghanistan.
* Tunisian terrorists have been the middlemen within the jihadist movement, making them well-connected and active in multiple theatres of conflict including Afghanistan, Algeria, Bosnia, and Syria.
* Tunisians comprised the largest number of ISIS’s rank and file. They benefited from the vacuum that emerged in Tunisia after the Arab Spring, which provided the space for extremist groups. This also contributed to instability in Libya.
* The convicted Pakistani terrorist Aafia Siddiqui is a huge cause célèbre for global jihadists including al-Qaeda and ISIS. She feeds into the narrative of freeing female prisoners.
Transcript:
SG: Dr. Sajjan Gohel
AZ: Dr. Aaron Zelin
SG: Hello, and welcome to DEEP Dive, brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. Each episode, we speak to experts and practitioners in international security and defence, counter-terrorism, and geo-political current events to gain insight into the most pressing matters of global affairs.
In this episode, we speak to Dr. Aaron Zelin who is the Richard Borow Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and a visiting research scholar at Brandeis University. Aaron is the author of the book Your Sons Are At Your Service: Tunisia’s Missionaries of Jihad. He is also the founder of the widely acclaimed and cited website Jihadology.net which is a clearinghouse for primary source content. Aaron’s research focuses on transnational terrorist groups in North Africa and Syria as well as the trend of foreign fighters, online jihadism, and jihadi governance.
Aaron, it’s great to have you with us for NATO DEEP Dive
AZ: Thanks for having me.
SG: Let’s talk about the website that you run, that provides primary source material, Jihadology. What is Jihadology? And why did you decide to create it?
AZ: Jihadology is essentially a primary source archive for propaganda from groups like al-Qaeda, the Islamic State, their branches, affiliates, key ideologues within the global jihadi movement, as well as any other smaller related groups. I started it back in May 2010. So, it’s almost 12 years now, in running. And I created it in the aftermath of concluding my master’s thesis at the time, because I was trying to write about and use primary sources in it. And I realised that it wasn’t necessarily the easiest thing to find, especially back in the 2008 to 2010 time period. And back then, at least, professors weren’t really teaching you how to exploit these documents for research. And I figured, you know, if I was having trouble with this, I’m sure other people were as well within graduate school. Of course, I never thought it would become what it became and how big it is. But now, obviously, many people use it beyond just graduate students. And I enjoy doing it and I’m glad that it’s been so useful to so many people in their research over the years.
SG: Well, I can say from my own perspective that it’s an essential clearinghouse for my academic research. And without it, I think it would be much harder to be able to conduct the primary [research] material that’s needed to understand what terrorist groups are thinking and potentially strategizing. What have been the main challenges to maintain Jihadology? And how has that evolved over time?
AZ: I don’t think that there are any large-scale existential types of challenges. But of course, in recent years as a consequence of the proliferation of social media, and certain governments being interested in taking the content down, there was then a greater focus on my website, since it was this stable location that had this huge archive of content going back pretty robustly since 2010, but then also a number of backdated content, going all the way back to the 1980s and 1990s. And therefore, the UK Government in particular wanted to restrict access to it so other people that had extremist proclivities couldn’t necessarily exploit it.
I will say that I think it was a low hanging fruit for them to go after my website. In part, because the reason why jihadis online, besides watching or reading the propaganda itself, a lot of it’s about the social aspects of the movement, and interaction between one another and camaraderie, and meeting one another and talking about these different issues. Whereas my website never provided anything like that, since it’s just a static site, it’s not a forum like they used to use back in the day or Facebook, Twitter. And then, of course, nowadays, they’re using more encrypted messaging applications. So, while I disagreed with the UK Government through three or four years of pressure, we were able to get a password protection on it in April 2019, so, it’s almost been three years. And I’m sure as you’ve noticed, online, jihadism hasn’t stopped in the last three years. And there are many websites actually run by jihadis, so I found it interesting that they would single me out in particular. That being said, I’m happy that it’s running. And that it’s being used by many people in many locations all over the world, to better understand these different groups, individuals involved in it, so that we actually have an understanding of it instead of, based off of flawed understandings from, whether it’s the media or even government trying to push their own narratives. People can actually go to the source themselves and see what they’re saying, instead of relying on anything else.
SG: Well, you very rightly said that terrorism hasn’t stopped in the last few years. In terms of al-Qaeda and ISIS specifically, have you ever faced any threats and challenges from them directly? And if so, how would you handle it?
AZ: Yes, there have been comments to me online before, on Twitter, making fun of me or even being threatening. Nothing that was to the point where I felt like my own person was in harm. But, if I felt like something bad could potentially happen, I’d obviously talk to law enforcement about it, and hopefully they would help out with the issue. But thankfully, nothing serious has happened. And I also think, in some level, because a lot of my research and the way I go about it is about actually deriving what they’re saying, even if we have different worldviews, I think on some level, some of them at least, respect the fact that I’m actually looking at what they’re saying, and not just coming up with stuff or going off the straw men or anything along those lines. And that, because I keep up with it, too, I am able to show that there are these changes over time as well, even if they still have extreme ideas.
SG: Does it get challenging to look at some of the material which can be quite gruesome, it can be disturbing, and when you’re having to process so much of that content, do you need to actually take a break on occasions from it? Or is it one of those things where, like a doctor, you get used to bad news and tragedies?
AZ: Well, I think one of the misnomers is that every single thing I put on my website, I look at. A lot of the time it’s just me downloading it from wherever I get it from online, from the groups themselves, and then uploading it on my website and then it’s there. I really only look at content that I’m directly doing research on at a particular time. And those that follow my research know that it has less to do with sort of the military and insurgent and violent aspects of the movement, and more of the socio cultural, ideological, governance related things like that. And therefore, I don’t get exposed to the ultra-violent actions, especially that ISIS does.
Of course, I have seen some of those videos, though I try not to watch it just because it doesn’t feel good watching it, of course. And my mental health is important. And I don’t think watching them adds any additional analytical utility beyond knowing the fact that we know that they’re extremely violent. But watching another beheading video is not going to tell me anything different in that way, in my opinion. So, some people see it as hazing within the field or like a rite of passage. But if you don’t need to look at that stuff I’d recommend not because I just don’t see any point in it. I find it more interesting the other aspects of what they’re doing, than the purely violent actions they’re taking.
SG: Absolutely. If we look at the attacks that have happened in 2022, the most notable one that occurred, perhaps first, was the incident involving the British National Malik Faisal Akram, who took people hostage at the Beth Israel Synagogue in Colleyville, Texas [15 January 2022], and he demanded the release of the Pakistani national Aafia Siddiqui, who had been convicted several years ago for attempting to murder members of the FBI and military personnel in Afghanistan. Now, Akram made references about Siddiqui and demands for her release, which seemed to echo views that had been made and expressed by both al-Qaeda and ISIS in the past. What is it about Aafia Siddiqui that attracts so much interest by the jihadis, especially when these groups themselves are misogynistic, and yet they seem to hold Aafia Siddiqui to a certain level that attracts a lot of curiosity?
AZ: Yes, she’s been a huge cause célèbre, in many ways, for the movement going back about a decade now since her arrest happened and trial happened. I think part of it is just that she’s seen as representative of someone that wanted to do something, even if it’s not the norm for women to try and want to conduct some type of attack. Of course, there have been some cases here and there, but she was one of the first cases like this, and the fact that she is from Pakistan, which has a huge extremist scene, in the West in particular, especially in the UK. So, I think that because of that sort of national connection, that feeds into it. Of course, there have been other women involved in the movement in the West, but a lot of them have been converts. So, they might just not have the same intrinsic feeling in some ways.
Of course, we’ve seen that increasingly since ISIS came back in 2013/14, that women had a larger role in these movements and therefore, we’ve seen more and more people touching upon it in the messaging of these groups. But Aafia Siddiqui still represents one of these original cases, and the fact that it’s related to the US and in her treatment of her, I think, adds to it just because of course, the US is seen as the symbol of all that’s wrong in the world for the movement. On top of the fact that, even though it is a very misogynistic movement, they also have sort of this idealisation of women as well. They talk about the need to guard their virtue or their chastity and things along those lines. So, I think some of it relates to that aspect of it as well, since, while Aafia is one person that they do talk about a lot, in general messaging they’ll talk about the necessity of helping out and freeing women prisoners too. So, it’s not just her, she’s just become sort of a broader symbol of this issue in general.
SG: Right, and one person who’s spoken about Aafia Siddiqui and also demanded her release on several occasions is the leader of al-Qaeda, Ayman al-Zawahiri. He’s certainly made many statements in the past about al-Qaeda’s agenda and attempted to maintain the movement under the banner of al-Qaeda, the jihadist movement that is, but has, of course, faced opposition from other groups like ISIS. How do you feel al-Qaeda has evolved under him since taking over from Osama bin Laden?
AZ: It’s definitely a different organisation, in some ways, while also still being the same in other ways. I think one of the differences is that al-Zawahiri doesn’t have that same history and charisma that bin Laden had and therefore his story isn’t quite as exciting as what bin Laden did, because he came from this rich family, but still lived in Afghanistan in a poor way and even used his own money to help out the cause. Whereas al-Zawahiri just doesn’t have that same legend in some ways. And then the fact I think people just find him kind of boring in his speeches.
I also think that one of the things we’ve seen since al-Zawahiri has been in power, which I’m not sure would have changed under Bin Laden, is that there’s this generational difference too, between the jihadis that got involved in the 1970s and ‘80s, and even into the 1990s, your ‘Boomer’/ ‘Gen X’ Jihadis, versus more of the millennial and Gen Z, Jihadis that came of age more in the post 9/11 era. And that’s why in some ways, you also saw this move for more of the younger, recent movement toward ISIS. Of course, there’s other dynamics related to the split between al-Qaeda and ISIS also, but I think part of it is a generational thing too.
One of the biggest differences that you’ve seen is the consolidation in revisions or reforms within the movement under al-Zawahiri, that were first born out of, what was seen as, the excesses of the Iraq jihad. And that’s why you’ve seen al-Qaeda in particular, while they have no qualms in killing innocent people, they try to target the focus just to security or military apparatuses, if they can, within theatres. Of course, it’s not necessarily the same in the western context, but at least in the areas where they’re operating in Muslim majority context, they’re trying to be much more cognizant of the local population’s views on what they’re doing.
And on top of this, because of it, the organisation has become more sophisticated and not just being purely involved in terrorism or insurgency, but social services, proto-governance, and the like. And as a result, building deeper roots within the local mildews and societies, which is in part one of the reasons why we see many of al-Qaeda’s branches in a number of locations. While they, from the outside, might seem more localised, it’s more complicated than that, just because of the fact that the ideology is still very much global. But part of it is a strategy to be embedded within these populations so that they can garner the support and then takeover. And we’ve seen this in a number of cases, whether in Yemen, Somalia, Mali, where they’ve taken over territory at different points and have tried to tweak and become smarter with it over time. And that’s why they’ve continued to not necessarily Excel. But as a consequence of their adversaries not being able to provide services, or they’re seen as corrupt, or poor governance, they’re able to take advantage of it. And that’s why we see the continued relevance of these groups in local insurgencies. Even if, on a global scale, I’d say that ISIS has probably seen more popularity than al Qaeda.
SG: I think that fits into the narrative that al-Zawahiri was speaking about, creating safe spaces around the Islamic world and to maintain a presence, embed yourself within host communities, try and win them over, and then strengthen from that position to grow, and potentially then expand. And if we look at al-Qaeda’s relationship with the Taliban and Haqqani Network, in terms of how it has developed, and then if we look at also the fact that these groups are back in power in Afghanistan. My understanding is that al-Qaeda already has a presence in Afghanistan. But can we see the Taliban and the Haqqani Network allowing foreign terrorist fighters to return to Afghanistan over time? Could we have a situation like in the 1990s, when the country had become a cesspool for extremism, where they would start plotting and planning attacks abroad? Or do you think that al-Qaeda is going to keep maintaining that kind of safe base approach in terms of trying to stay relatively local in order to grow and continue to rebuild?
AZ: Yeah, I think you, in the beginning of your statement, had a key point there that al-Qaeda is already there, they never really left. I mean that’s one of the misnomers, at least, if you look at the political debates about this, as to whether or not the withdrawal by the US will lead to al-Qaeda returning to Afghanistan. But the reality is, they’ve been operating there for the last 20 years still, even since the US invasion after 9/11. So, they’ll continue to do that in many ways.
Though, I think one of the things that they’ll focus on now, especially since the Taliban actually controls the country, since they don’t need to necessarily fight anybody, per se from the outside, is that they’ll help buttress the insurgency in Pakistan, as well as trying to use their easier freedom of movement now, to make it harder for their adversaries to stop them in other locations in that region now. So, Kashmir in India, and then plausibly trying to go farther afield into other places, whether it’s Bangladesh or Myanmar, or trying to restart things with allies in places like Indonesia or Malaysia.
So, I think that’s one thing I’m looking out for. Especially the fact that since 2014, al-Zawahiri created a cut out within al-Qaeda called al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent (AQIS), which is just another branch for that region. So, I think that with that freedom, they’re going to be able to put more resources potentially into that instead of Afghanistan necessarily being the key location where you necessarily think about them.
In terms of the foreign fighter question, I don’t think that the Taliban really wants foreign fighters to go there in the same way that we saw in the 1990s. Part of it is that the Taliban now is a lot stronger than it was in the 1990s. It also has had a lot of experiences over the last 20 years. And as we’ve seen, since the fall of Kabul is that they’re trying to get more and more legitimacy in the international realm. There haven’t been many reports, at least as far as I’m aware publicly, that there’s been a huge stream of foreign fighters trying to get into Afghanistan.
Part of it, too, I think is attributable to the fact that like I said earlier, a lot of younger people are more interested in ISIS than al-Qaeda or the Taliban. They see both groups as not legitimate. Of course, we do have an ISIS branch within Afghanistan and Pakistan. So, it’s possible that you’ll see people from sort of regional straits glomming on to that just because it’s easier, but in terms of a large flow of people from countries outside of that regional environment where it’ll be more difficult to get into Afghanistan, from the Arab world or the West, I think, at least initially, it’ll be relatively limited. Plus, the fact that, as a consequence of what we saw in Syria, with the large-scale foreign fighter mobilisation, more governments are willing to stop people before they even go instead of letting them go and being like, “Oh, well, they’ll die there. It’s okay.” Even though that never is the case, they always return home—a portion of them. So, I think that because of the more proactive security measures, in many parts of the world not just in the West, it’ll just be more difficult for people to go in the first place.
So, it’s a complicated, multi-layered issue in many respects, of course what’s happening now can change depending on anything that could happen in the future, which is hard to predict, of course. But I think overall, the Taliban is more concerned with stopping outside security forces coming in and ruining sort of their Islamic Emirate project, which is why they’ve gone so hard against the Islamic State over the last four or five months now.
SG: It was interesting that in the build up to the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, and thereafter, that a lot of the terrorist groups that were aligned to al-Qaeda, including al-Qaeda core, and AQIS that you mentioned, al-Qaeda in the Indian Subcontinent, as well as AQAP (al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula), all issued congratulatory messages to the Taliban on their victory in Afghanistan. I think AQAP even produced a nasheed in honour of the Taliban victory. And then the fact that the Taliban does not actually outrightly condemn al-Qaeda.
Does that concern you to the extent that the opportunity for the relationship to continue more openly is there, because if you’ve got al-Qaeda and the affiliates endorsing what’s taking place, and they’re looking at the potential of enhancing that in terms of building and strengthening it, and then the Taliban’s refusal to condemn al-Qaeda, that that lays it open for the potential of another theatre re-emerging, in terms of what we have seen before? I know, you mentioned that the Taliban are not necessarily all that keen on having them. But then if we also look at the fact that the Taliban is not a single monolithic group, so you’ve got the Haqqani Network, for example, that are very close to al-Qaeda. Is it that this is, as you use the word very correctly, complicated? So, how do we unravel exactly how this can actually transpire when we’ve got all these complications with al-Qaeda and the different Taliban factions?
AZ: It’s definitely a messy issue because — I think there’s one way of understanding this — so for example, there have been rumours that when the new leader of the Taliban came into power, al-Zawahiri, of course, gave bay’ah to him, just like he did in the past to the previous one and bin Laden did to, of course, Mullah Omar. Whereas the most recent one, allegedly, according to sources within the movement, he didn’t accept al-Zawahiri’s bay’ah, which is interesting. It’s also possible that it could be disinformation that this has been put out there by elements within the movement. But the fact is that you’re right, the Taliban hasn’t explicitly condemned al-Qaeda or tried to arrest or stop any of them within their own territory, in the same way that we see them going after ISIS.
And I think the case of Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) in Syria is an informative angle to understanding this as well, because since they broke ties from al-Qaeda, in 2016/17, not only have they done the ‘talking of the talk’, but they’ve ‘walked the walk’ too. Where they’ve actually cracked down upon and either jailed, killed, or forced people to leave their territories from al-Qaeda’s branch in Syria, Hurras al-Din. Whereas in the case of Afghanistan with the Taliban, there has been nothing along those lines. So, it does augur questions for the future. Especially if people are not paying as much attention, because there’s such a heavy focus when there’s such a huge news story, but as that wanes over time, whether al-Qaeda will then pop its head out in a greater way, because they realise that the US or Western governments or others are focused on some other problem set, whether it’s an issue like Ukraine, or maybe something in the Pacific vis a vis China, or what have you. Especially because of this increasing focus on great power competition and more challenges by Russia and China, as well as more regional countries like Iran or North Korea, challenging the status quo, at least of the post-Cold War era.
So, that will be the biggest determinant and I think we’ll have a better understanding of that probably within the next one to three years, then this lull period, in some ways, post-Kabul falling, because I think al-Qaeda is being smart about keeping a low profile in Afghanistan for now, while there’s still somewhat of a focus on it, even though I would argue that there’s less of a focus on it now than there was saying August or September.
SG: Right. It’s fascinating what you’re saying about these dynamics. We’ve been talking about Afghanistan and al-Qaeda, some 20 years after the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. But let’s go back to pre-9/11 If we can and talk about the assassination of the Northern Alliance leader Ahmed Shah Massoud, which was the precursor to the 9/11 attacks. The theory being that without Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Northern Alliance would collapse, and that the Taliban would be able to take over Afghanistan freely, because the United States wouldn’t be able to have a ground ally to help them once the 9/11 attacks had unfolded. And in the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud, you had a number of Tunisian terrorists playing a key role in this operation.
You’ve written about this, why were Tunisians involved specifically for this plot. My understanding was also that Ayman al-Zawahiri may have not directed the 9/11 attacks, but he was also assigned the role of working to kill Ahmed Shah Massoud. What would you say this operation was planned in the way it was, it seemed very meticulous? And it doesn’t get the same level of attention as the 9/11 attacks do, but really, it should. So, can you break down the assassination of Ahmed Shah Massoud and the role of the Tunisians in this?
AZ: Yeah, so Tunisian foreign fighters that were based in Afghanistan in the late 1990s, had their own sort of group called the Tunisian Combatant Group, which was essentially an ally of al-Qaeda. And through al-Qaeda’s resources, they were able to plan this attack, which, like you said, happened two days before 9/11. Two parts of this, one you you’ve referred to, is, of course, that bin Laden wanted to give this as a present to the Taliban, because he knew that 9/11 was, of course going to happen so that once the US invaded, the US would have a harder time having a strong ally to fight against the Taliban. Of course, the US came in and cleared the Taliban from control pretty quickly. But we saw once they started to come back in 2004 and 2005, with the insurgency, that because of the fact that there wasn’t the strong figure, but more splintered different groups in different parts of the country that would help out, that is definitely harder and subsequently we’ve seen over time the Taliban get stronger and stronger until they took over the country again.
The Tunisians they play an important role because the leader of the group, Abu Ayyad al-Tunisi [Seifallah Ben Hassine], became a close confidant of bin Laden, and, at least according to reporting by the New York Times, became one of the 10 most important figures to bin Laden in the late 1990s, up till the 9/11 attacks. The thing too is that the Tunisian network that was based in the West, especially in Italy, France, and Belgium, they were most known for document forgery and helping out with facilitation and logistics in the movement.
So, one of the reasons why you didn’t hear a ton about Tunisian Jihadis until after 2011 was because mainly they were these middlemen within the movement. They weren’t the top leaders; they weren’t the ideologues that everybody knew. And because they were middlemen, they were really connected to everybody in the movement. And therefore, also, whenever the new hotspot sprang up, or a new group that became the most important group, they were able to then just shift what they were doing from the thing that they were focusing on to the next thing. So, going from Afghanistan to then focusing up with helping in the Algerian Civil War in the early 1990s, to then helping with the foreign fighter flows to Bosnia, a year or two after that, and so on and so forth.
So, as a result, because of this, they were able to get easier documents forged to get access to Masoud in the first place because they, the two individuals that were involved in the attack itself, pretended to be journalists that were going to interview Massoud. But of course, they planted a bomb within the camera that they used. So, once it all came about after planning for about a year or so, they were able to pull it off, and Masood was murdered two days before 9/11. But it is interesting, as you note, the fact that Tunisians were involved in the attack really doesn’t get the same kind of publicity as you hear of the fact that around the post 9/11 era that so many people focus on, say, Saudis, or Yemenis, or Egyptians, because there’s so many people within the leadership of al-Qaeda at the time from those nationalities.
Yeah, it’s a good question. It’s hard to say. I think part of it is just people didn’t know how to zero in on it because the Tunisians weren’t the top leaders, or the top ideologues within the movement itself. Though, because of this, and the fact that people didn’t focus on it as much. Post-2011 then obviously we saw, with the opening of society in Tunisia following the revolution, that it provided a base for them to actually recruit people. And then, of course, it’s no surprise now that everybody’s like, “Oh, my God, all these Tunisians in Iraq and Syria, and Libya are foreign fighters. A part of this goes back to that older history where they were always there, they just weren’t the leading people. And only after 2011, did you really see them come into their own as being key personnel within the movement, especially within the ISIS domain.
SG: And this was very well documented in your excellent book, which was titled Your Sons At Your Service. In that book, you talk about the Tunisians in detail, and provide a perspective that is demonstrating just how significant they’ve been when it comes to transnational terrorism, not just within al-Qaeda, but of course, with ISIS too. And in fact, they attributed, I believe, perhaps the highest number of ISIS’ rank and file when it came to foreign fighters as part of ISIS. Why has Tunisia produced so many? Was that because of the dictatorial policies that had existed inside the country, and then once the regime had fallen during the Arab Spring, that it was like Pandora’s Box had opened up or other factors to play?
AZ: I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there was an openness in Tunisia after the revolution, which provided the space for Ansar al-Sharia (AST), which was the group that was created following the revolution, which was an al-Qaeda affiliate, to proselytise and recruit people. Imagine if, say, Egypt or Saudi Arabia or whatever country that people think of historically having larger accruement for jihadis, they became a democracy and people were able to just openly proselytise and recruit. I actually would argue the fact that there weren’t more Tunisian jihadis is actually interesting in some ways, because of the fact that was such an open system. Of course, it’s become more restrictive since they designated Ansar al-Sharia as a terrorist group in August 2013 and then the government really starting to seriously crack down upon the movement following the Sousse Beach attack in the summer of 2015.
But for the first two and a half years after the revolution, as a consequence of Ennahda, the main Islamist party being in control of the government, they sort of had this light touch approach with the jihadis locally, because they felt that if they crack down upon them, it would radicalise them and that eventually, they might take over Tunisia in the same way that the former leader of Tunisia Ben Ali did to the Ennahda movement in the late ‘80s, and 1990s. And therefore, you know, maybe 15 or 20 years later al-Qaeda would be in charge of Tunisia.
Of course, it was a flawed reading of their own history, because, in the same way that being over the top with cracking down and torturing in the light, as we’ve seen, in the case of, say, Egypt, not doing enough also provides the space for the potential for the movement to grow as well. You need to calibrate something in between where it’s not too hard and not too soft, of course, Ennahda has since learned that lesson. And now sort of disavows that policy. And they’ve been serious at going after them when they’re in power again in 2017 until 2019/20. Until this most recent political coup that happened in July 2021.
So as a result, once the government started to crack down upon the local movement AST in 2013, you already had this larger population of individuals that could then be plucked, and recruited to do foreign fighting abroad, since the opportunity to do that was more ripe than actually operating locally. So, as a result, while there had been recruitment for foreign fighting endeavours abroad, in Iraq, Syria, and Libya, prior to the designation of AST in 2013, with the acceleration of the government’s crackdown upon the group, that then provided the reservoir for people to be like, “Well, I’m just going to leave here and do jihad elsewhere now.”
So, a lot of it had more to do with the particular post-2011 context than beforehand. But I think the fact that there were many Tunisians involved prior to 2011, and therefore provided a cohort of people that could then help build up the capacities locally after 2011, is more of a surprise for people because it seemed like it came out of nowhere, because there wasn’t that much activism within Tunisia itself, because of the authoritarian regime and a lot of it happened outside of Tunisia, whether it was people that were based in Europe, or people getting involved in foreign fighting, whether it was in Afghanistan or Iraq, or Bosnia or Somalia, Yemen, and the like.
So, because of this openness, this shed light on what was already happening in this process beforehand, in a way that wasn’t possible previously. And I imagine that if you did see an opening and other authoritarian regimes, that a similar dynamic would probably play out as well, on some level. So, I just think that Tunisia, because of its unique places, is the only country that really did have this true democratic opening, even if we’ve seen some backsliding now in the last year, in particular, that we could see this in a way that you can’t see in other authoritarian contexts. Just in the same way that you are exposed to and see all the different types of arrests or mobilizations that people have in a western context, because they’re also democracies.
SG: Well, you’ve provided a very important perspective on Tunisia. And I think what you said that you’re surprised that there haven’t been more just demonstrates potentially what may or could emerge down the road if there’s more instability in other parts of the world, if not within the Maghreb itself.
If we can look at Tunisia’s neighbour, Libya, one of those stories that just doesn’t seem to die down or go away, is the 2012 Benghazi attack on the US Consulate, which occurred on the 11th anniversary of 9/11. And one of the terrorist groups that you mentioned in the context of Tunisia, Ansar al-Sharia, was tied to the attack, along with jihadists from Egypt, with I believe the blessings from al-Qaeda’s core command led by Ayman al-Zawahiri. Now the attack resulted in the death of US Ambassador Stevens and three other Americans. On the one hand, the attack seemed to be somewhat opportunistic, and on the other hand, it looked like it was very well planned and premeditated. Can you unpack what transpired and ultimately, how well coordinated was this attack?
AZ: I think it’s important to also contextualise this beyond just Libya at the same time period there are also these large-scale protests in Cairo at the US Embassy, as well as one at the embassy in Tunis in Tunisia. The one in Cairo due to the Egyptian security and Americans, it really died down and didn’t lead to anything more than protests and some destruction of some property on the outside of the embassy. And Ayman al-Zawahiri’s brother actually, Mohammed al-Zawahiri, was a key instigator in what was going on there.
In the case of Tunisia, they actually, the group I already talked about, Ansar al-Sharia in Tunisia (AST), brought ladders and went into the complex of the US Embassy in Tunis, and burned a lot of them, they raised the black flag at the embassy in Tunis. And it’s quite remarkable that nobody was actually injured or killed. Based off of interviews I’ve had with people from the embassy, though, it is possible that there could have been more people that were killed, because they’re in a safe room in the embassy, but because of all the fires, the fire smoke was starting to get in the safe room. And they’re worried if the Tunisian presidential police, then come and stop everything and save them that there could have been a lot of people that could have suffocated to death because of the smoke. So, thankfully, that didn’t happen.
It’s important to know that this was not just a purely Libya thing that was happening on these dates, around the anniversary of 9/11. but we saw it regionally as well. In terms of Libya, in particular, the main group that was involved was also Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, which was sort of the Libyan branch of this. As you know, there were foreign fighters from Egypt involved, of course there’s foreign fighters from Tunisia too. And I think there needs to be two things separated. One is part of this was spurred on by the fact that there was this film created that was seen as Islamophobic. And therefore, there were people that were involved in protests, because they were not happy about this. But then there is also the fact that there are these jihadists that were able to take advantage of these protests, to then use it to do something far more sinister and violent, which we did see in the case of the attack on the consulate in Benghazi.
There were two things happening and that’s part of the reason why there’s this confusion, why some people like, “oh, it started out as this spontaneous protest type thing.” That was definitely true, but there was also the second aspect of it to where the jihadis were able to use that as a cover for them for what they really wanted to do, in the same way that they were hoping to do in Cairo, and in Tunis, as well. It’s just that in Benghazi it was the most successful in part probably because it was a civil war atmosphere. Whereas in Tunisia even though there was the revolution, there wasn’t a civil war afterwards. There was a proper government and they had control of their territory. And in the in the same way, in Egypt, even though the Muslim Brotherhood was in charge there, they were in charge of making sure that there wasn’t anything super bad happening. And the fact that the Egyptian military still also had a tonne of power, as we would then eventually see a year and a half or so later when they did their own coup in Egypt.
So, I think that there’s a lot going on there. And many people glommed on to only one aspect of it at a time, depending on maybe what their partisan viewpoint was in the American political context, instead of looking at the whole picture related to some people truly being upset at this Islamophobic film, but then the jihadis being able to take advantage of that for their own means. And the fact that this didn’t just happen within Libya or Benghazi, but it was this broader phenomenon that they were trying to exact on the United States, in the region as a whole.
SG: Well, I’m glad that you’re unpacking it to show just how wide this actually was. That it wasn’t just in the context of Libya, but you’ve also got to look at what was unfolding in Tunisia, as well as in Egypt. And you mentioned, the protests outside the US Embassy in Cairo, led by Ayman al-Zawahiri’s brother, Mohammed al-Zawahiri.
It’s also interesting that I recall that Ayman al-Zawahiri issued an audio message commemorating the 9/11 attacks, some people speculate that that was almost like the signal to these different groups across North Africa to start their protest agitations, their plotting. Do you think that the al-Qaeda command was ultimately playing a role in this? Maybe they didn’t know the finite details of what was going to transpire, but they were aware that there was something that was going to be unfolding?
AZ: It’s definitely plausible. And when you go back to that time period, the command-and-control features within the organisation were also a lot stronger since many historical senior figures within the movement were still alive. Whereas nowadays, it’s far more complicated due to the drone campaign that has killed so many senior leaders, as well as leaders within the historical moment going all the way back to the 1980s, and that’s partially why you have greater issues now in the way people view the broader network, and why it is viewed as maybe more decentralised, because of that. And the lack of sort of human connection in the same way many of these people had, when they networked, for lack of a better term, in the anti-Soviet jihad in the 1980s.
SG: Right, and that’s such a key dynamic to all of this. Let’s conclude our discussion on how we started by talking about Jihadology. Did the content that you were coming across and uploading reduce in volume during the pandemic, or did it actually increase ironically? And what do you envisage down the road for the work you do with Jihadology in 2022? How do you see that shaping up?
AZ: I think one of the biggest dynamics that we’ve seen, in part of the ebb and flow of documentation, is you saw a larger growth in it in the past decade, in part because technologies were a lot easier accessible in a commercial venue, and the strength of the technologies in terms of video, in particular, and therefore is a lot easier to put out content related to that in a way that wasn’t necessarily possible in the first decade after 9/11. But one of the features too, that you can notice, is that when these groups sort of control territory and become proto-states, or states depending on your perspective, they put out a lot more content, because it’s not just about the fighting, but also the governance that they’re conducting. So, for example, when ISIS was in control of territory, in Iraq and Syria in particular, and Libya too, for that matter, the amount of information they were putting out on a daily basis was unfathomable. Whereas nowadays, it’s much less so since more of it’s just purely related to insurgency and military operations.
So, that had a huge part in the number of content that I was posting on Jihadology — was directly related to that. But if you look at other groups, they’ve been relatively steady themselves. What’s interesting, though, is that, in the case of the Taliban, while they put out a lot of content now, it’s not in the same way that they did prior to their takeover of Kabul. Whereas before, a lot of it was primarily just branded as part of their al-Emarah media wing or other smaller ones that are lesser known, like Manba al-Jihad and the like. Whereas now, they’re trying to present themselves like a normal state, and therefore a lot of it’s more like public diplomacy type of messaging and branding, instead of it being sort of like propaganda-style branding, which is interesting to see that change in comparison to say, ISIS or HTS or AQAP or AQIM when they have been in control of territory, where they continued in some ways to operate that same type of propaganda-like material instead of trying to make it seem as if they’re a normal state.
I will say that HTS on some level, they’re trying to do that with their civilian government called the Salvation Government in Idlib. But they still have HTS as this apparatus too so it’s this weird dichotomy where they don’t fuse them together to make it seem as if they have this one legitimate government instead of it seeing like this military apparatus, sort of behind the scenes, acting as a marionette doll to this civilian front for their governance apparatus locally.
In terms of going forward, I think one of the things that will be a constant is that there’s more and more calls, not necessarily for the legitimization or normalisation of many jihadi groups, but accepting the fact that they are realities on the ground and therefore you need to deal with them, which is why you see more calls for negotiations, diplomacy, and the like with jihadi groups in different arenas in a way that we really hadn’t seen before. Part of this, I think, is because the jihadi groups have been able to sustain themselves and become stronger and consolidate their capabilities in different arenas.
But also too, I think, part of it is to try and take some of these jihadi groups off the board in terms of being direct threats to the west. And the fact that many in the US, as well as even in Europe, are increasingly looking at what Russia and China are doing. And seeing that is a much greater strategic, and potentially even existential threat, depending on which country might be thinking of. And therefore, if the jihadi groups are there and not bothering Western interests or trying to do attacks abroad into western countries so long as there are no operations, then I think some people in Western countries will be like, “alright, we need to be realistic about it and use our resources wisely.” And obviously, while the drone campaign has helped derail a lot of the senior leadership in al-Qaeda’s historical leaders, as well as many people in different iterations of ISIS, it hasn’t stopped the growth in people being interested in this ideology over time, and therefore, they’re able to re-spin themselves into a new web again and start over.
Part of this is also the fact that the governance and corruption in the places where they operate, continue to be poor, or get worse, or governments become more authoritarian and less democratic and therefore, this creates greater opportunities for jihadi groups to create an alternative vision of governance. So, in many ways it’s gotten to the point where there’s this, now, competition, in some respects, about models of governance. And you can see this not just with relation to jihadis and these local areas that they’re operating in, but I’d argue that it’s a broader trend globally in many ways. Whereas, the original Cold War between the US and Soviet Union was, in some ways a competition between economic models, capitalism or communism, in many ways, I see this current era is sort of a competition of governance models, and who could provide in a way that doesn’t necessarily just talk about the economic aspects of it, but also your day to day living in terms of whether you should be free or be more restricted in your freedoms. Between these models that China’s pursuing in different areas and trying to explore to Russia, or these more theocratic understandings, whether it’s Iran on one side, or these Sunni jihadi groups on the other side. So, it’s definitely transitioning into a new time period. And I think that’s why these questions related to the jihadi movement will get increasingly more complex, because of the fact that I think it’s less of a black and white issue now than say, it might have been on 9/11.
SG: Well, your perspectives and your analysis has been fascinating. And I’m so glad to have had you on the show to be able to distil all the complexities when it comes to the jihadist arena. And I think what you’ve laid out at the end just demonstrates the challenges and how those are going to evolve, but also, potentially, how there are many dynamics that are going to be difficult to predict, as well. And then the added aspect of the great power competition that only complicates the situation even further.
Aaron, thank you so much for appearing on NATO DEEP Dive. I hope to have you back again in the future.
AZ: Yeah, that’d be great. Thanks for having me.
SG: Thank you for listening to this episode of DEEP Dive. I’m your host, Dr. Sajjan Gohel. DEEP Dive is brought to you by NATO’s Defence Education Enhancement Programme. The production and research team are Marcus Andreopoulos and Victoria Jones. For additional content, including full transcripts of each episode, please visit: deepportal.hq.nato.int/deepdive.
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